Mask of Despair and EQD · 1:45am Mar 2nd, 2020
A couple months ago, I submitted The Mask of Despair to EQD. Rejected, obviously. At the very least, they gave me some notes on it. More notes than all the other comments and messages combined. On that note: why did no one tell me it was such a mess? It’s got random capitalizations, missing words, and tense troubles all over. I’ve fixed the ones they mentioned, but I know there’s plenty more still to be fixed. I also went back and properly capitalized all the Unicorns, Pegasus, and Earth Ponies. (Ethnicities are capitalized.)
Honestly, the minor grammatical stuff isn’t what really concerns me. That stuff is just an irritation, and reasonably easy to fix. More problematic are my two main weaknesses. Description and narrative action for one character after someone else speaks. I’m just awful at descriptions. (I’ve complained about this before.) The narrative action thing is a trap I’ve let myself fall into, and I’m not sure how to get out of it. I’m not even sure how I fell into it in the first place.
Unfortunately, those two issues are pretty crippling. It’d take me weeks of serious rewriting to clean them up… or longer. I’ve got too much else I’m trying to do to go back and re-work a considerable percentage of the text. So I guess I won’t be seeing Mask of Despair on EQD. Ever.
This is why I need an editor. Right now, all I’ve got to work with is Grammarly. It’s better than nothing, but it still misses so much, and can’t help with context.
On less depressing fronts, Broken Wings and Mending hearts is now my second most liked story (as well as my second most disliked story.) The other thing that makes me happy is that every chapter in Mask of Despair finally has 100 views or more. … it only took two years. Ash of Fallen Stars has nearly 100 views, too. (Just 1 off at time of writing.) I get the feeling it’s not going to get many more, the last two updates have gained me only two new viewers. My only hope is that those who are interested are reading Mask of Despair first…
I thought that was supposed to be less depressing… I need hot chocolate.
I have noticed this on quite a few stories. Everyone goes on about how good the story is and never mentions the misspelled words, wrong words, etc., etc. I have not read your story so I cannot comment on it. However I have gotten a little tired of pointing out word problems of various types and looking at the story two to three weeks later and finding the same errors still there. In most of those cases I just stop pointing them out, read the story and get on with my life. I am to d---m old to sweat the small stuff. Do the best you can, let the story set for a week or so and then read in over don't hurry, Read it out loud, print it out and have someone you trust read it. Run it through Grammarly or something like it. Don't trust spellcheck Keep trying. Luck to you. B. D.